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Tuesday, 24 January 2012

The Year of the Superhero

It seems these days that there is always one superhero movie or
another playing at the local multiplex, and this year will see several
titles hit the screen.

I’ve been catching up on the X-Men movies – I saw and very much
enjoyed Bryan Singer’s The X Men when it was released way back in 2000,
but for some reason had never gotten around to watching the others.
Until now that is – I recently picked up at a bargain price a dvd set
entitled, The X Men Quadrilogy – isn’t that an ugly word …quadrilogy!
It doesn’t sit right on the tongue, there’s an awkwardness about it,
but I digress and four movies for a tenner can’t be bad. Now I’ve always
enjoyed superhero comics but the movies have more often than not left
me cold but, as I said, I enjoyed the original X Men movie so I decided
to give these a try – watching them over a four day period – one film a
night.I
enjoyed all of them, with Wolverine origins being the weakest in my
opinion. Yeah I know The Last Stand gets mixed reviews but I enjoyed
that one and found it a fitting end to the trilogy proper. Wolverine
wasn’t exactly a bad film, and Jackman was great but the movie just
wasn’t as interesting to me as the X Men movies, though it was cool to
see Wolvie beat up on a helicopter. Maybe the X Men work better when
presented as a team and the plots of the first three movies were
certainly far more layered than the Wolvie standalone. The second and
third movies seemed to be loosely based on the Dark Pheonix story arc
which I actually own as a collected graphic novel.

Historically Superhero team up movies don’t really work and the
pudding seems over egged, becoming far too much to digest – The
Fantastic Four movies weren’t exactly hot and think how the Batman
franchise went stale when too many villains, not to mention heroes were
introduced – Batman Forever was naff and the less said about Batman and
Robin the better, but the X Men, in the hands of director Bryan Singer
worked well. Of course the emphasis was on Wolverine and Jackman was
brilliant in all three of the original trilogy, but then so too were
other cast members, especially Alan Cumming as Nightcrawler. But as a
stand alone character Wolvie just felt lost, the movie too felt small
despite some brilliant setpieces, but the Wolverine of this movie seemed
more Rambo than rampaging renegade.

Bryan
Singer was originally back on board to direct the third movie, but he
left the series for Superman Returns (bet he regrets that, now) and Matthew Vaughn came on board as director in February 2005, but left due to the rushed production schedule. Brett Ratner took over in June,
and filming began on August 2, 2005. Maybe it would have been better
regarded by fans had Singer remained, but the eventual movie did tick
all the right boxes and some of the effects are incredible – moving the
Golden Gate for one after Magneto does some cool tricks with the traffic
and the final bam,bash,wow fight is a joy. I picked up the prequel
movie, X Men: First Class this week and am looking forward to getting a
chance to settle down and watch it.

So
as we enter 2012 the film industry is hoping for a good year with
several superhero films hoping to generate some much needed revenue.
Marvel films are to release The Avengers this May and there are high
hopes that this team up will be another X Men, for Singer’s movie did
revitalize the superhero movie and without it there would have been no
Spiderman, Hulk or Iron Man. Superhero movies are coming thick and fast
at the moment with both Captain America and Thor doing big business
last year. And of course the third in the Dark Knight trilogy is also on
the way and to say that film is eagerly anticipated would be a massive
understatement and that’s not to mention the Superman reboot, The Man of
Steel (though that’s not due till 2013) , as well as the new Spiderman
pic. And besides the biggies we’ve got another Ghost Rider on the
horizon, a new G I Joe and a reboot of Judge Dredd simply titled, Dredd.
2012 is certainly the year of the superhero

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GARY DOBBS/JACK MARTIN

Actor and novelist. As an actor I have appeared in Doctor Who, Torchwood, Gavin and Stacey, Moonmonkeys, Larkrise to Candleford, The Reverend, The Risen.
As a writer I write westerns for the Black Horse Western imprint using the name Jack Martin. Under my own name I am responsible for several novels including the popular Granny Smith series. And using the name Vincent Stark I have written some pretty disturbing stuff.

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